I don't understand writers who feel they shouldn't have to do any of the ordinary things of life, because I think that this is necessary: one has to keep in touch with that... The ordinary action of taking a dress down to the dry cleaner's or spraying some plants infected with greenfly is a very sane and good thing to do. It brings one back, so to speak. It also brings the world back.

If one will always have to feel white first, and African second, it would be better not to stay on in Africa

Music has no limits of a life-span.

Power is something of which I am convinced there is no innocence this side of the womb.

Your whole life you are really writing one book, which is an attempt to grasp the consciousness of your time and place– a single book written from different stages of your ability.

Disaster is private, in its way, as love is.

Books dont need batteries